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I have begun a massive e-mailing campaign to many merchants involved with parasites. With the holiday shopping season upon us, I have been informing merchants that I would love to promote them heavily, but am unable to because of their relationship with various parasites.

I would just like to encourage my fellow ABWers to do the same, and maybe, just MAYBE a few affiliate managers can become better educated about parasites and ABW.

I have been including a link to my site where I would promote them and a link to ABW.

I know it's been done before but I figure now is the time of year where if enough e-mails get sent to them, prehaps a few will see the light.

There have been numerous discusions of this but merchant education has been at best a very mishapp process. All that is done helps but it would be nice if things were handled better.

Every network lists new merchants coming on board. IMO a group of people responsible for getting email addrs for these new merchants and sending them a formal note regarding parasites and ABW sent to them "at startup" would be the best way to approach this. After parasites gain a strong foothold in a merchants program, it's much harder to get merchants to deal with them IMO.

True, it has been haphazard. There are a few affiliates who email a few merchants, a few merchants who participate on ABW, and a few testers doing sporadic testing and occasionally going public with results.

Agreed it has been haphazard. BUT if done in a professional manner (non-accuasatory and educationally constructive), it CAN work. Last year, by myself, I got two merchants to drop BHOs, and both affiliate managers claimed they were unaware of their practices.

Now if I can educate 2 merchants, ABW as a whole can get a lot more. Just today, I've already received 3 responses from managers inquiring more into this problem. And another mass e-mail was sent out by a merchant's new manager asking if there were any ways to improve his program, to which I responded.

My point is that all of us seriously into affiliate marketing are all professionals, and this matter needs to be approached in a professional manner. If you can show an affiliate manager that their competetion is receiving prime real estate on your site because of their fair affiliate practices, some will act.

Granted, some merchants will always deal with parasites. I'm just pointing out that right now is a great time to influence those that have a chance of changing.

I was astounded to find, get this, 1621 merchants participating in the current BargainBuddy download. (See my post.) Combine that with BB's installation through security holes, and there's a problem of unusual scale and scope.

I have a list of all targeted merchants -- for BB as well as for many of the TopMoxie apps and for other programs too. Just a question of figuring out how to get this data to the right decision-makers.